Hi Guys! What has happened here?! Yesterday I logged into my profile and saw I was subscribed!! Everything is acting weird and while I'm typing this journal, I am really wondering how I got subscribed .... It wasn't me, for sure..
I hope someone can shine a little light on this...

It has been ages the last time I've been here. A lot has happened and I have the feeling letting you down a bit. First of all, I've returned from my holidays! I spent 3 weeks in the South of France with my kids and girl. I saw the most incredible creatures there and luckily managed to shoot (photograph) some! I hope I can post some the coming days.. BTW. The Hyperdrive HD80 is an awesome piece of machine! A serious must have when you go out for some serious bug shooting! I can heartly recommend it...

I still can't believe I'm subscribed.... How did that happen?! But anyway, my headaches are still there. Almost continuously which sucks pretty bad. My doctor says it can take some time. But the way he said it, sounded like a REALLY long time... I tried to stay away from my pc a bit, but that's hard when you're a freelance Flash developer. Which brings me to another thing which is awesome: I found myself another job!! Actually.. a job found me! I was on an earlier holiday lying in the grass photographing a grasshopper, when someone called me. Being in a very uncomfortable position being very quite, it was impossible for me to pick up the phone. On my voicemail was a message that was like this: "Hi, I'm ... from ... I found your number on my desk. Don't know how it got there, but it's about Flash. Please give me a call."
So I did and after coming home from my short holiday we had two talks and I got the job!! I'm already working for 3 weeks (4 days a week) for them. It's awesome!! It's been a while I really liked working!!

Also I promised you a link to the unicycle commercial. It's finished. You can view it on Youtube and on my website. It has become a cool video! It's the major of Amsterdam riding on a unicyle. His face on my head/body!

Damn, this journal is getting long.. I'll stop typing and try to catch up with the huge amount of messages. Please be gentle with me as it can take a while. I'm also very busy with my new unicycle website which is going to be awesome. When it's online for public, I'll let you know!
And who got me subscribed??!

I'll try to be online more often and post some pictures. And I want to see the pictures you've submitted too. But that list is... beyond catching up. 765 deviations... Whaaaahhh!!!

Thanks guys for the lovely comments on my profile! =fays, *marble911 and =Jennbawa: You're the best!!

John

Woops, I've been tagged! Blame ...

the rules:
1. Post these rules.
2. Each person tagged must post 8 random (hopefully interesting) facts about themselves.
3. Tags should write a journal of these facts.
4. At the end of the post 8 more bloggers are tagged and named.
5. Go to their page and leave a comment telling them that they're tagged.

1. Done

2.
# It seems I love deadlines. I'm the King of Postponing and always wait with doing things when it's (almost) too late to finish it.

# When I'm doing something or found something interesting to do, I find myself to be addicted to it quite easily. Same with deviantART...

# I looooove bugs!

# I can't smell. And therefore my taste isn't what it should be either.

# Besides photography, I like unicycling. And mainly trial- and mountain unicycling.

# I really like doing things which aren't very wise to do or people told me not to do. This has ended up in several stupid or dumb-ass situations.

# I like making people laugh.

# I suck at telling stories of things that have happened, things I've read or things people told me. It is never as funny as when I heard it the first time.

3. Done!

4. No, it ends here... I want everyone to spend more time outside shooting pictures!!

5. Go on, Shoot!!


I'll be on holiday for almost 3 weeks from tomorrow onwards. We're going for Spain, but no exact plans. We'll see how far we'll come. I hope it will do my head good as I will have no access to a pc, tv or what so ever. Just a tent, my family and my camera. Lots of fresh air and lots of sleep. Now you know the reason I won't respond to any of your comment the next weeks...
My head is doing better. Still not what it should be, but there's progress. It has been 3 months already... Thanks for all the interest and caring you've showed! Heartwarming.... I've bettered my life and stayed away from my pc/tv as much as possible. deviantART is still on my mind and all the lovely peeps I've met here.

Speaking of holiday. I've bought myself an imagetank! I'm thrilled! I bought a 80GB harddisk to go with it. Which means I can shoot an endless amount of pictures during my holiday!! Jihoeeee!!
I'll pick it up tomorrow, and I hope I can give it a few tests before I leave.. It's the Hyperdrive HD80. ([link]) Not the best one there is, but it should do the job.

And now that's it for today. I should sleep...
Thanks for reading and love you all!

John

Here's a little update for those of you who are wondering why I don't respond on any of the photo's you submit. I'm ashamed first of all... I'm getting lovely feedback on my stuff, but it's quite from my side. Second: I want to blame the doctors, but actually I'm the one to blame. They advised (read "told") me to minimize the use of PC and TV, reading and strongly advised me not to drive my car. So basically my life sucks pretty bad at the moment. I'm almost living in a black hole and am allowed to work only 2 hours a day. The sunshine hurts my eyes, can't take noise and have headaches all day. And why am I to blame? See this [link] on Youtube. I like photography, but I like unicycling too! The crash caused a concussion and after almost 2 months, it's still not what it should be.
So I try to avoid my PC, although it's quite hard with deviantART around....

But thank God also fun things happen. Monday I had a commercial shoot where I played the stand-in for the mayor of Amsterdam who has to unicycle in the commercial. That was a lot of fun. Don't think the doctors would allow me doing this, so I didn't tell. During the Post-Processing, my face will be replaced with his.
You can check my website [link] to see some photo's of one of the last takes. I was wearing a wig, loads of make-up and a suit. Just click 'Enter' and you'll see the pics. When the commercial is done, I'll let you guys know.

Also I want to thank everybody massively for the 's and 's. That cheers me up a lot! You're the best! I check my messages list once in a while, but it's growing and growing. The deviantWATCH list is huge: so many submissions I want to go through... I know there's more to life than deviantART, but damn, I like it so much !

Another reason for this journal, is because of a statement ~abart made in a comment on my profile. He said (and I quote):
"seems like one cannot get an ideal photo without using photoshop .... i hv concluded after visiting so many galleries that u always need to treat ur photos in any photoeditting tool to achieve best quality"
We had a sort of '2 man discussion' about it. I like to have more opinions about this to create a sort of discussion because it is an interesting subject. Do you need to use photoshop or all kinds of filters to create a good looking picture? If you look at pictures which are clearly post-processed, will they have looked less great without the use of photoshop? Or without the use of special filters?
I'd like to hear what you think about it. You can read the discussion on my profile page if you like.

Sorry for the bunch of blabla, but it feels like I just had to say it to someone.
Please forgive me for not responding (or very late) to your comments/fav's and watches! I really DO appreciate it, but I can't find time to do it. I hope everything will clear up soon and life will return to normal.

Thanks for reading ,
John

What a terrible combination! Just came back, my 'Community Messages' list is overflowing, shot over 2000 pictures which I have to go through to see which ones I think are good enough to submit, got awesome comments from even more awesome artists and even submitted some links to the while being on holiday! Are there groups for this out there? I hope so... Otherwise I'll start one.

No just kidding... Of course holidays are awesome, but the time you have to spent to process them... Haha!

BTW. Thanks you so much again for all the support, comments, 's and ! I'm flattered... And OMG I just (now) reached 1000 placed comments and so many more will follow... Can you image how many hours I spent typing?

But anyway, I learned a lot during my holidays. While the weather was terrible, I still wanted to shoot outside. To be able to shoot flying bugs, I had to use flash to crank up my shutter speed. This gave very interesting results and I've used it a lot. (Even when the sun was shining!). You'll see some results coming up the next days. The combination with manual focus was very powerful! I was actually chasing my little friends! (Damn, they're fast...)

If anyone has some questions about the shots I took or how I shot them, feel free to ask. I'd be happy to share the techniques I've used. And please tell me if you think things can be better or different. Can't stress enough I want to learn from my pictures and the mistakes I've made! I'm still learning... (And will always be!)

Thanks again SO much for all your support!! It means the world to me...

John

*edit* OMG What is happening here?! I've reached 600 pageviews! 200 more than barely 2 weeks ago! Thanks heaps peeps!

Club I'm in:

Oh my.. I've become a bug addict! Never imagined myself being one! I LOVE bugs.. This probably doesn't make me any more popular amongst most my friends who are not into photography... Time for new friends? Naaahh.... I'll be quite...

And I can't say it enough: deviantART rocks!! Spending waaaaaay to much time here... I've got a concussion at the moment caused by a crash while mountain unicycling. (You can see the video here on YouTube). Because of this concussion I should take it easy. And I do, but still spending way too much time here... Started a few months ago being active here on DA and found it pretty addictive... But probably most of you have the same experience!
And the people I've met here on DA! Amazingly friendly and helpful! I'd like to give 'em all a very big

This journal is mainly to say how happy I am to be here on deviantART. Learned so many things, met great people, joined a fantastic club: , get a lot of great response to the things I do and people even favorite them! Still can't believe it...

Thanks to you and love you all!

Coming 2 weeks I'll be using deviantART a lot less. I'll be on holiday. But there's a pro: I'm gonna shoot a lot of bugs!! So expect a mayor flow of pictures coming in in about two weeks! )

(Happy) John

*edit*
OMG... I've reached 400 pageviews!! Thank you SO much guys! Awesome....

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Club I'm in: